The Trial of Henry Kissinger by Christopher Hitchens. Verso Books, New York, 160 pages , 2001, $22.00.
A Necessary Prologue
If truth is always the first casualty of war, then the newly declared jihad on global terrorism has already claimed its initial victim. Since the atrocities of September 11, 2001, we have all been told repeatedly that “nothing will ever be the same.” Would that it were so. Unfortunately, the official rhetoric – reinforced by a bipartisan consensus of retribution – bespeaks hoary notions of good and evil that make the political climate seem nothing so much as déjà vu all over again.
The strained and fundamentally fraudulent comparisons to the Second World War that have become common currency in the last month would be laughable were they not so disorienting and morally obtuse. September 11, 2001, was many things, but it was not December 7, 1941; as for George W. Bush, even his most ardent partisans would not presume to claim FDR’s mantle for him (nor, I suspect, would he want them to). No, the grainy images (digitally enhanced, of course) that immediately come to mind today, as the administration begins to stiffen our “resolve” for the long and protracted struggle ahead, are not those of the Second World War but of the first Cold War.
As with that latter conflict, we are not so much confounded by the enemy, as we are confused about who – or, more precisely, what – it is. During the first Cold War, we thought that the Soviet Union, or even “communism” generally, was the foe; hence, we almost always saw demons were there were only mere human beings, revolutionary fanatics were there were only frustrated reformers. The rest, as they say, is history – many times melancholy, oftentimes unspeakable: individuals eliminated, nations and entire continents “realigned” to a “free world” that was indeed free for some but an unattainable and cruel destiny for most. Mossadegh and Iran; Arbenz and Guatemala; Lumumba and the Congo; Allende and Chile; Steve Biko murdered, and Nelson Mandela and his comrades imprisoned for decades on Robbin Island, in South Africa; hundreds of thousands of people (a million?) slaughtered in Indonesia; desaparecidos in Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay; the killing fields of Cambodia; Lambrakis and the colonels’ dictatorship in Greece; the invasion and occupation of Cyprus; and on and on: the mind reels and the stomach turns at such a sanguinary notion of “freedom.”
In the end, of course, the Soviet Union imploded (having committed its own heinous crimes in the name of a grotesque socialism and an equally monstrous “fraternity of peoples”), while former communists were – and continue to be – freely elected to parliamentary majorities in formerly “enslaved nations.” Life (as Mikhail Gorbachev would say) always finds a way to slap us rudely and sharply in the face.
The People v. Henry A. Kissinger
Which leads me to the book under consideration here. One of the truest – and most succinct – comments on the Vietnam War, and the era that defined it, was made in a comic strip. We have met the enemy, Pogo said famously, and it is us. Christopher Hitchens’s new book proves it.
I was not prepared for The Trial of Henry Kissinger. I had read Hitchens’s last two polemics, The Missionary Position and No One Left To Lie To, and was perplexed; I didn’t understand why he had written them – or, rather, why he had written them the way he had. They were both really long magazine articles rather than books, and, if you were not already convinced of their respective arguments (Mother Teresa’s specious saintliness on the one hand or Bill Clinton’s Nixonian mendacity on the other), I don’t think either book would prove persuasive.
The Clinton book in particular was a lost opportunity. Hitchens is a compelling polemicist, which is to say that he is exceedingly thoughtful. He is one of the few people in the American journalistic establishment who has actually read something besides politicians’ memoirs and David Halberstam’s books. For that reason, he is an acute critic of this historical moment in the United States, when the ideological consensus has virtually anesthetized the body politic. Indeed, by continually contesting the various shibboleths of that consensus, he has sought to expose its moral weaknesses. If this is a work in progress, it is unfair to judge it – or him – prematurely. In the event, The Trial of Henry Kissinger is – true to its title – a devastating indictment, not only of the man but, more to the point, of the nation in whose name he spoke, and acted, for many years.
The Bill of Indictment
Hitchens begins his book with the caveat that it “is written by a political opponent of Henry Kissinger.” Nevertheless, he continues, “I have found myself continually amazed at how much hostile and discreditable material I have felt compelled to omit.” He then stipulates that he is “concerned only with...offenses that might or should form the basis of a legal prosecution,” specifically: war crimes, crimes against humanity, and “offenses against common or customary or international law, including conspiracy to commit murder, kidnap and torture.”
He rightly stresses that the verdicts of the tribunal convened by the United Nations at The Hague to adjudicate war crimes in the former Yugoslavia, as well as the precedents established by the undaunted attempts of Spanish magistrate Baltazar Garzon to bring Augusto Pinochet to justice, have, once and for all, nullified the “defense of ‘sovereign immunity’ for state crimes” and thus “destroyed the shield that immunized crimes committed under the justification of raison d’etat.” Hitchens is clear and unsparing about any “failure to proceed” against Henry Kissinger in this new international legal regime: if the most powerful democracy in the world does not act now, it will “violate the essential...principle that not even the most powerful are above the law” and, consequently, “suggest that prosecutions for war crimes and crimes against humanity are reserved for losers, or for minor despots in relatively negligible countries.” He ends his preface by citing the philosopher Anacharsis’ comparison of the law to a cobweb: strong enough to hold the weak, but too weak to restrain the strong.
Hitchens limits himself to Kissinger’s actions in five areas of the world – Indochina, Bangladesh, Chile, Cyprus, and East Timor – as well to his alleged involvement with what Hitchens terms a “wet job” in Washington, DC, directed at Greek journalist Elias Demetracopoulos. I will not rehash Hitchens’s evidence for each particular other than to say that, while it is brief in all cases, it is nonetheless damning in most (I will come back to the one instance in which I think it is not). There are, however, two cases – one that has truly taken on international dimensions and one that concerns all Greeks directly – that I believe warrant more than passing mention here.
Chile
Rene Schneider was chief of the general staff of Chile in 1970 when Salvador Allende was elected president of the country. As such, General Schneider was the guardian of the Chilean military’s traditional abstention from politics (legendary throughout Latin America at the time). Indeed, General Schneider was publicly committed to his nation’s democratic process and constitution, and utterly opposed to any intervention by rogue (which is to say extreme right-wing) elements of the armed forces. It was about Chile, however, that Henry Kissinger infamously remarked that there was no reason to allow a country to “go Marxist” just because “its people are irresponsible” (although he had earlier described it as “a dagger pointed at the heart of Antarctica,” i.e., of no vital national interest to the United States). As things tragically turned out, the military guardian of Chilean democracy would become the first victim of the United States’ guardianship of the “free world.”
Within a week and a half of Allende’s election on September 4, Richard Nixon called in Kissinger and CIA director Richard Helms for a meeting at the Oval Office. The agenda was simple and straightforward: keeping the newly elected socialist from being sworn in as Chile’s president within the 60-day period mandated by the nation’s constitution. Hitchens quotes from Helms’s notes of that meeting:
Not concerned risks involved. No involvement of embassy. $10,000,000 available, more if necessary. Full-time job – best men we have....Make the economy scream. 48 hours for plan of action.
The “plan of action” hatched by Kissinger and Helms was equally straightforward: Kidnap Rene Schneider, and make it look as if supporters of Allende had perpetrated the crime. Helms and his head of covert operations, Thomas Karamessines, were skeptical, however. Hitchens again quotes Helms: “We tried to make clear to Kissinger how small the possibility of success was.” Kissinger, however, was unimpressed. He instructed the two to proceed.
At this point, Hitchens makes the following comment:
Here one must pause for a recapitulation. An unelected official in the United States is meeting with others, without the knowledge or authorization of Congress, to plan the kidnapping of a constitution-minded senior officer in a democratic country with which the United States is not at war, and with which it maintains cordial relations.
And in case there is any doubt as to the wider sequence of events for which this “kidnapping” was intended to be the catalyst, Hitchens also quotes extensively from the US government’s cable traffic at the time between Washington and Santiago. I will cite only one example, a cable from Washington dated October 16, 1970:
- ...[P]olicy, objectives and actions were reviewed at high USG [United States Government] level afternoon 15 October. Conclusions, which are to be your operational guide, follow:
- It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup. It would be much preferable to have this transpire prior to 24 October [the scheduled date of his inauguration] but efforts in this regard will continue vigorously beyond this date. We are to continue to exert maximum pressure toward this end utilizing every appropriate resource. It is imperative that these actions be implemented clandestinely and securely so that the USG and American hand be well hidden....
- After the most careful consideration it was determined that a Viaux coup attempt...would fail. Thus it would be counterproductive to our [Track Two] objectives. It was decided that [CIA] get a message to Viaux warning him against precipitate action. In essence our message is to state, “We have reviewed your plans, and...we come to the conclusion that your plans...at this time cannot succeed. Failing, they may reduce your capabilities for the future. Preserve your assets. We will stay in touch. The time will come when you...can do something. You will continue to have our support.”…
- There is great and continuing interest in the activities of Tirado, Canales, Valenzuela et al and we wish them maximum good fortune.
- The above is your operating guidance. No other policy guidance you may receive...are [sic] to sway you from your course.
- Please review all your present and possibly new activities to include propaganda, black operations, surfacing of intelligence or disinformation, personal contacts, or anything else your imagination can conjure which will permit you to press forward...in a secure manner.
Some explanation is necessary here. General Roberto Viaux was an extremist right-wing officer who in 1969 had tried to overthrow the government of Christian Democratic president Eduardo Frei; he was the one initially approached by the United States to kidnap General Schneider. However, several CIA agents in Chile itself felt that Viaux was too untrustworthy (even for their jaded tastes apparently) and managed to convince their superiors in Washington – and ultimately Kissinger – to add a more “respectable” group to the plot, mentioned in Paragraph 5 above, led by General Camilo Valenzuela, head of the army garrison in Santiago. This “two-track” policy, as Hitchens points out, reproduced the greater, and prior, two tracks that had been created to mastermind and implement the overthrow of Chilean democracy – making even more duplicitous what by now had become a seemingly endless tale of US government duplicity.
For the mind-boggling fact is that this entire conspiracy by the American government to destroy the democratically elected government of Chile was perpetrated, not only against the explicit wishes and recommendations of then-US ambassador to Chile, Edward Korry, but with his complete ignorance of it – to the point that military attaches in his own embassy were, unbeknownst to him, directly contravening his orders not to have anything to do with extremist right-wing elements plotting Allende’s downfall. Hence, Track One was the “legitimate” face of the US government represented by Ambassador Korry, while Track Two was the covert operation directed by Kissinger to sabotage Allende’s election. The profound cynicism – some would undoubtedly call it evil – involved here is truly breathtaking.
To make a long – and infinitely shameful – story short, the kidnapping of General Schneider (by the Viaux group in the end) went awry, and he was assassinated in the attempt. Nevertheless, Salvador Allende was, of course, sworn in as president of his country, but three years and a week following his election, he was violently overthrown in a coup by another chief of staff, Augusto Pinochet, who had none of the constitutional scruples of General Schneider. Allende, along with thousands of his fellow citizens, died in the ensuing bloodbath, while everyone who survived was doomed to 17 years of one of the most brutal dictatorships in the hemisphere – yet another victory for US policy and the “free world.”
Cyprus
I assume that many readers of this review are intimately familiar with the sad tale of US complicity (even if only tacit), not so much in the actual invasion(s) of Cyprus by Turkey, as with the Greek-sponsored coup against Archbishop Makarios that provoked them – and thus allowed Turkey to justify them (or at least the initial one). I would like, however, to make several points – or, rather, to cite several points made by Hitchens – that reinforce the legal case against Henry Kissinger.
The most important, and genuinely scathing, one speaks to Kissinger’s authority. And here, I confess, that although I lived through those years, I simply did not remember the concentration of power that Kissinger had amassed, unique in the annals of the Republic. I quote Hitchens:
[W]hen [Kissinger] became secretary of state in 1973, he took care to retain his post as...National Security Advisor. This made him the first and only secretary of state to hold the chairmanship of the elite and secretive Forty Committee, which considered and approved covert actions by the CIA. Meanwhile, as chairman of the National Security Council, he held a position where every important intelligence plan passed across his desk. His former NSC aide, Roger Morris, was not exaggerating by much...when he said that Kissinger’s dual position, plus Nixon’s eroded status [during the Watergate scandal], made him “no less than acting chief of state for national security.”
I should once again stress the ramifications of the paragraph above: From Thomas Jefferson in the first administration of George Washington to Colin Powell today, no other secretary of state ever possessed the institutional, and actual policymaking, power held by Henry Kissinger. Put another way, his watch as secretary of state was, quite literally – in the most proprietary sense of the possessive – his watch.
As far as Cyprus was concerned, it is abundantly clear now (as it was then, for that matter) that if Kissinger had wanted the United States to intervene in defense of constitutional legality and the democratic adjudication of the intercommunal disputes dividing the country at the time, he could have done so – or at least made the attempt. He did not care to, however, if for no other reason than his well-known distaste for Makarios. As Hitchens points out, Kissinger baldly stated in his memoirs that Makarios “was the proximate cause of most of Cyprus’s tensions.” It is not surprising, therefore, that when it became common knowledge throughout the region and in Washington that the Greek junta in power at the time was preparing a coup against the democratically elected president of the island republic, Kissinger turned a blind eye to the information his own state department was providing him and hoped for the best – that is, the worst for Cyprus, which would have been Makarios’s ouster and possible assassination.
There is in fact a smoking gun here (one of the many virtues of Hitchens’s book is that he uncovers a veritable arsenal of smoking guns). Again, I’ll let Hitchens tell the tale:
In May of 1974, two months before the coup in Nicosia which Kissinger later claimed was a shock, he received a memorandum from the head of his State Department Cyprus desk, Thomas Boyatt. Boyatt summarized all the cumulative and persuasive reasons for believing that a Greek junta attack on Cyprus and Makarios was imminent. He further argued that, in the absence of a US demarche to Athens, warning the dictators to desist, it might be assumed that the United States was indifferent to this. And he added what everybody knew – that such a coup, if it went forward, would beyond doubt trigger a Turkish invasion.
A couple of pages later, Hitchens describes the fate of this and other reports by Boyatt.
Thomas Boyatt’s memoranda, warning of precisely what was to happen (and echoing the views of several mid-level officials besides himself), were classified as secret and have still never been released. Asked to testify at the [1976 House Committee on Intelligence] hearings, he was at first forbidden by Kissinger to appear before Congress. He was finally permitted to do so in order that he might avoid a citation for contempt. His evidence was taken in “executive session,” with the hearing-room cleared of staff, reporters, and visitors.
So much for democratic accountability and an open society.
In a sad coda to this dismal affair, less than two weeks before the coup against him, Makarios released an open letter that directly accused the Greek junta of attempting to destroy Cyprus and murder him, characteristically referring to an assassin’s invisible hand: “I have more than once so far felt, and in some cases I have touched, a hand invisibly extending from Athens and seeking to liquidate my human existence.” Nevertheless, when Henry Kissinger was asked, soon after the coup, why the US did not anticipate events, his answer, grotesquely, was that “the information was not lying around in the streets.”
A “Wet Job” in Washington?
The only count in Hitchens’s indictment against Kissinger that I find unpersuasive concerns an alleged plot by the Greek dictatorship to kidnap and murder Greek journalist and anti-junta activist Elias Demetracopoulos, about which, according to Hitchens, Kissinger must have been informed. Anybody who has followed Hitchens’s career over the years knows of his relationship with Demetracopoulos; and Elias Demetracopoulos himself is familiar to anyone who was at all involved with anti-junta activity in the United States during the time of military rule in Greece.
Hitchens accurately describes Demetracopoulos’s opposition to the colonels as “an extraordinary one-man campaign of lobbying and information...against the military gangsters who had usurped power in Athens.” Demetracopoulos did indeed perform extraordinary services for the anti-dictatorial cause in the United States, especially because it was often a very lonely and unpopular struggle. (Conveniently enough, the Greek American community belatedly discovered the democratic heritage of its ethnic forebears only after the junta fell, taking Cyprus down with it.)
It is also true that Demetracopoulos became a thorn in the side of the Nixon administration because of his investigative work, primarily his discovery of the hundreds of thousands of dollars illegally funneled from the Greek dictatorship to the Nixon-Agnew campaign in 1968 through KYP (Kentriki Ypiresia Pliroforion), the Greek intelligence agency, which was at the time a recipient in its turn of CIA funding. Demetracopoulos went to Democratic Party chairman Larry O’Brien with this information and, as Hitchens notes, “historians have since speculated as to whether it was evidence of this ‘Greek connection’...that Nixon’s...burglars were seeking when they entered O’Brien’s Watergate office....”
Hitchens is right to argue, therefore, that Demetracopoulos was persona non grata in the Washington of Nixon and Kissinger. I do not believe, however, that there is substantial evidence to indicate that any visceral animosity the latter might have had against Demetracopoulos led to aiding or abetting kidnapping or murder. Indeed, even the primary evidence of the colonels’ plot against Demetracopoulos hinges on some interpretation.
Hitchens quotes from the memoirs of Constantine Panayotakos, the Greek junta’s ambassador to Washington during the regime’s last months in 1974.
I was informed about some plans to kidnap and transport Elias Demetracopoulos to Greece...which reminded me of KGB methods. On 29 May a document was transmitted to me from Angelos Vlachos, Secretary General of the Foreign Ministry...about the most efficient means of dealing with...Demetracopoulos....
Finally, another brilliant idea of the most brilliant members of the Foreign Ministry...transmitted to me on 12 June, was for me to seek useful advice on the extermination [emphasis added by Hitchens] of Elias Demetracopoulos from George Churchill, director of the Greek desk at the State Department, who was one of his most vitriolic enemies.
Hitchens then immediately comments:
(In Greek, the italicized word above is exoudeterosi. It is pretty strong. It is usually translated as “extermination,” though “elimination” might be an alternative rendering. It is not a recipe for inconveniencing or hampering an individual, but for getting rid of him.)
Exoudeterosi actually means “neutralization,” and, while it is pretty strong, it often means simply that. In my experience, at least, I have never seen it used to mean extermination, which, in Greek, is exontosi, exolothrefsi, or even xeklirisma. It can occasionally mean “elimination,” as Hitchens says, and precisely in the way in which he indicates, that is, a dictator eliminating his opponents. I do not get that sense, however, from Panayotakos’s context. I think that what was clearly meant in the passage above was an action to neutralize Demetracopoulos as an effective opponent to the military regime and a spokesman for democracy.
Indeed, I think that the historical context is important here. First of all, unlike the Chilean or other Latin American military regimes, the Greek junta was not particularly murderous – at least not until the suppression of the Polytechnic uprising in November 1973. It certainly tortured thousands of Greeks, but it was not known for assassinating its political opponents. Murders similar to those of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt in Washington or Carlos Prats in Buenos Aires by the Chilean regime were not the modus operandi of the Greek colonels. If the Greek junta did not eliminate Andreas Papandreou or members of the central committee of the Greek communist party – or hundreds of other domestic opponents – when it had a chance, I cannot believe that it would have gone to the length of assassinating a liberal exile journalist.
Second, while all of us who came of political age during the Sixties are inured to the most horrific stories of CIA violence, I do not believe that a State Department functionary at the time – albeit a Nixon appointee – would have plotted the death of a foreign journalist legally residing and working in Washington, DC. In fact, what makes the case against Henry Kissinger so compelling is precisely the evidence that Hitchens has gathered to prove how unique Kissinger’s actions were in relation to his predecessors or successors at the Department of State.
And, finally, since I’m on the subject of Henry Kissinger, the evidence to date that Hitchens presents on this matter is thoroughly circumstantial. As such, it simply does not explain – let alone prove – why Kissinger should think that Demetracopoulos was so dangerous (either to Kissinger personally or to the national interests of the United States) as to entangle himself in a plot to murder the Greek journalist.
Nevertheless, Kissinger has information in his archives that he has never released and that is germane to this case. Hitchens is thus right to argue that, “n order to be cleared of the suspicion, and to explain the mysterious reference to Demetracopoulos’s death in his own archives, Kissinger need only make those archives at last accessible – or else be subpoenaed to do so.”
With Liberty and Justice for All: Some Conclusions
At this moment, magistrates of four Western nations and US allies (two of them NATO members) – Argentina, Chile, France, and Spain – have issued warrants to Henry Kissinger to testify in several cases of murder and disappearance in Latin America during the time of US support of military dictatorships there. Recently, CBS’s 60 Minutes produced a report on the assassination of Rene Schneider, and on the determination of Schneider’s family – and especially his son – to have the case reopened in the United States. It is clear that a new international regime of criminal justice, which will not be led astray by political considerations, is slowly, if hesitatingly, taking shape. In doing so, it is judiciously and scrupulously imposing its mandate of defending human rights and, for that matter, entire communities of people wherever – and by whomever – in the world they are violated.
I wrote earlier in this essay that I was not prepared for Hitchens’s book. One of the reasons was that I had read several reviews of it, all of them sympathetic but ultimately critical of what the reviewers thought was his incomplete evidence. Consequently, I thought it would be as tentative as some of his previous works. It is not. It is as robust and thorough an indictment as anyone can possibly compose in 150 short pages.
I have only partially described the chapters on Chile and Cyprus here; the chapters on Indochina, Bangladesh, and East Timor are just as persuasive – and inculpatory of Kissinger. I think critics have been harsh to Hitchens because they cannot bring themselves to imagine – let alone accept – the possibility of what he is proposing: the prosecution of a former secretary of state of the United States for crimes committed during his tenure. I think, however, that Hitchens will be vindicated in the end for his persistence (and, let it be said, courage), and that Kissinger will be disgraced, if not in a court of law, then in the court of international public opinion, much as Augusto Pinochet – a man once shamelessly described by Kissinger as “a victim of all left-wing groups around the world” – was finally publicly humiliated throughout the world by the doggedness of Baltazar Garzon.
In the event, it behooves Greeks and Greek Americans (and, even more so, Cypriots and Cypriot Americans) to assist in the international process to bring Kissinger to justice – in this instance, for his actions against the republic of Cyprus – by seeking redress in whatever legal jurisdiction they can. It should be repeated here in that context that, as Hitchens writes, there are still a dozen American citizens unaccounted for following the Turkish invasion of the country. It should also be said in that regard that the so-called “Greek lobby” has performed a profound disservice, both to Cyprus and the United States, by its disorienting pursuit of “the rule of law” in every venue except that of an actual courtroom! (It goes without saying, of course, that the notion of administrations such as those of Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan actually caring about the rule of law is downright surrealistic.)
The Trial of Henry Kissinger is a profoundly important book, even more so now following the recent mass murders in New York and Washington, DC. It is not excusing those outrages, or pausing even one second from bringing those responsible to justice – and, in fact, destroying their capacity ever to repeat their perverse violence – to state the obvious: that, in a world fractured and deformed by injustice and seemingly irreducible inequalities, terrorism is a permanent condition. The only permanent safeguard against it in fact is our own stance in the world, which must be to defend justice and systematically contest global inequities and diminish them – and be seen as doing so. As the most powerful nation in the world, there will always be people who will despise us. The point is not to give them any rational reason for doing so, which is to say that we must not give them the ability to proselytize among the unsuspecting.
Among the infinite sadnesses of being a New Yorker of a certain generation after the attack on the World Trade Center was being a witness to the amnesia surrounding the date of the event. As television networks and major newspapers speculated on the significance of the day and month chosen by the perpetrators of the crime, I could only reflect on what so many people must have been thinking in Chile, from the current (socialist) president to the residents of Santiago’s barrios. For while I believe that there was absolutely no connection between one event and the other – Osama bin Laden would have murdered Salvador Allende even quicker, and with less remorse, than he would murder any American – I could not help but remember the day of the coup almost two decades earlier that destroyed a nation (and the hopes of many of us around the world): September 11, 1973.